Hit/Exp/Haste increases the maximum possible uptime of SotR.Mastery increases the effect of SotR when it's up.

It's already been determined that if you press SotR whenever you're at 5HP, Hit/Exp/Haste wins, as your damage intake is much more smoother.

However, what if you don't care about uptime? What if you keep it around as a miniCD, perhaps sitting on your 5HP until you really need it? Naturally, you'll take more damage overall, but you'd be able to use SotR when it really shines. With that reasoning, Mastery would really shine over Hit/Exp/Haste.

Hit/Exp/Haste increases the maximum possible uptime of SotR.Mastery increases the effect of SotR when it's up.

It's already been determined that if you press SotR whenever you're at 5HP, Hit/Exp/Haste wins, as your damage intake is much more smoother.

However, what if you don't care about uptime? What if you keep it around as a miniCD, perhaps sitting on your 5HP until you really need it? Naturally, you'll take more damage overall, but you'd be able to use SotR when it really shines. With that reasoning, Mastery would really shine over Hit/Exp/Haste.

My question would then be... what are you using your HP on... WoG? Or are you just sitting on 5HP until you "need" your SotR?

Edit: Nvm, just saw you're talking about doing the latter. If that's the case, you're definitely losing out on dps, as well as increasing your damage intake (without gaining extra vengeance, since you'd already be gaining the vengeance from those attacks anyway.)

I don't see much point in the "sit at 5 until I need it" strategy. By using it at 5 right before your next generator, you'll always have one more cast for when you "need" it. And the extra casts will greatly reduce the number of times you "need" it in the first place, because you'll take fewer large spikes.

theckhd wrote:I don't see much point in the "sit at 5 until I need it" strategy. By using it at 5 right before your next generator, you'll always have one more cast for when you "need" it. And the extra casts will greatly reduce the number of times you "need" it in the first place, because you'll take fewer large spikes.

Hmm, that makes sense, though it's 1 HP generating cast away, so only CS/HotR/Judg/AS+, and if you're not Hit/Exp-hardcapped, only when it actually hits.

But either way, if he sits on it on 5HP or not, he's going for less uptime, which I agree is more overall damage taken, but slightly stronger SotRs when he really wants them.

Not saying it's the better option. I'm merely saying it could be the reason for gearing the way he does.

It's not just a matter of overall damage taken though. Think of it this way: what constitutes a situation where you "really want SotR"? Probably a spike event, where you just took two back-to-back melees and are sitting at <50% health. But using SotR when you're actually at 50% health is a lot less effective than not getting there in the first place. And that's obvious when taken to an extreme: if you wait until 10% health to use SotR, you're going to be screwed because the next attack is still likely to kill you even with 50% mitigation.

If you bank until 5 and spend to avoid wasting HP generation, you're eliminating some (most, in fact) of those dangerous back-to-back melee situations to begin with. So what you're doing is turning situations where you'd drop to <50% health and spam SotR twice in panic into situations where you had SotR up for the first attack or two, don't dip as sharply, and thus don't "need" an additional SotR. And of course, you'll always have the second for backup.

This works even without reaching hit/exp cap, those just make the tactic better. Even if your next HPG misses, you still have 3 seconds of SotR uptime to help cover you until you get your next generator off.